Alec Douglas-Who?

I found this piece in my draft items which for some reason had not been published


I was amused by a piece in last nights Cambridge Evening News regarding a 1964 student plot to kidnap then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home.

The plot was uncovered with the release of the diaries of former Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham which have been donated to the Churchill Archives Centre at Cambridge University.

It describes how the students managed to enter the home in Aberdeen that Douglas-Home was staying in, which was unguarded as there was no room for is bodyguard. It was there that the PM entertained them with beer and sandwiched before the students left.

It drew a hysterical response from Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation who seems to have a limited recollection of other security breaches when he says

‘It was one of the worst breaches of a Prime Minister’s personal security in the 20th Century…… If Home’s assailants had been darker in purpose he could have died that night.’

Obviously this ranks as worse than the phone tapping and planned military coup against Prime Minister Harold Wilson who was to beat Home in the 1964 General Election.

Anyway, if the students had been successful in their kidnap plot, would anyone have noticed?